Hi, my company is Initial Technologies Ltd, we are a provider of IT systems and telecommunications attempting to implement Zimbra - first for ourselves, then if it proves successful, for our large customer base of businesses.
During the installation process i have gained a reasonable grasp of Linux, however it is most likely the correct DNS settings that have eluded me. Internal emails, calendaring and tasks work excellently and we find it very promising as a replacement for Exchange for our customers - the problem comes when sending mail to SOME external domains - hotmail works fine for example but our other email domain (initialtechnologies.co.uk - squirellmail hosted by amenworld.com) spits the emails back with this error:

This is the mail system at host mail.initialtechnologies.com.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

// If your ISP provided one or more IP addresses for stable
// nameservers, you probably want to use them as forwarders.
// Uncomment the following block, and insert the addresses replacing
// the all-0's placeholder.

You've missed out the details of your internal DNS records and if that really is your MX record contents that you've posted (and I see it is from a dig command) above then it's incorrect - it should be the FQDN of yoru mail server. Go to the Split DNS wiki article (or read the many threads on this topic) and see the correct format for an MX record and the steps to confirm the validity of your configuration.

Thanks for the speedy reply Bill, apologies for my ignorance but when you say "details of your internal DNS records", which files would you like to see?
in db.mail.initialtechnologies.com i have matched the format exactly to the SplitDNS - Zimbra wiki page, replacing the example.com with our name in all instances.

From what i can see there are two MX records held by amenworld - one pointing at our FQDN (mail.initialtechnologies.com) and one pointing at our WAN IP (80.229.17.180) - would removal of that IP mx record make the other work? Again sorry for my ignorance, the DNS settings are currently a gap in my knowledge.

Thanks for the speedy reply Bill, apologies for my ignorance but when you say "details of your internal DNS records", which files would you like to see?

I wanted to see the output of the commands from the 'Verify....' section of the article.

Originally Posted by initialtechnologies

dig mail.initialtechnologies.com all

This is incorrect, the correct command should be (for your domain):

Code:

dig initialtechnologies.com mx

Not the FQDN of your server as you've used in the previous exapmle.

Originally Posted by initialtechnologies

From what i can see there are two MX records held by amenworld - one pointing at our FQDN (mail.initialtechnologies.com) and one pointing at our WAN IP (80.229.17.180) - would removal of that IP mx record make the other work?

You can't use an IP address in an MX record so yes, removing the record that has the priority of 5 should improve matters.

Hi Bill, thanks for your patience with this one - i have amended the MX record and now receiving the correct dig replies that WikiSplitDNS suggests. Unfortunately the error remains, even after a full Zimbra reinstall. Here is a re print of all current outputs:

// If your ISP provided one or more IP addresses for stable
// nameservers, you probably want to use them as forwarders.
// Uncomment the following block, and insert the addresses replacing
// the all-0's placeholder.

Still not working

An update: after much time wasted attempting to understand the DNS setup, a GUI called Webmin laid out the configuration process in a more user friendly way. It turns out that emails work perfectly from and to 'user@mail.initialtechnologies.com' but not 'user@initialtechnologies.com' - This is still a problem as i do not want 'mail.' on the front of my domain - especially when i roll this system out to our customers who have pre-existing exchange systems. I have attempted to create an alias domain, which sends out fine but will not recieve from external - again 'Unrouteable Address' error. I have also attempted to create a persona for the user, to have the same (recieving from external) not work. PLEASE HELP... we have spent too long attempting to get this to work - we have customers waiting for this.

An update: after much time wasted attempting to understand the DNS setup, a GUI called Webmin laid out the configuration process in a more user friendly way. It turns out that emails work perfectly from and to 'user@mail.initialtechnologies.com' but not 'user@initialtechnologies.com' - This is still a problem as i do not want 'mail.' on the front of my domain - especially when i roll this system out to our customers who have pre-existing exchange systems. I have attempted to create an alias domain, which sends out fine but will not recieve from external - again 'Unrouteable Address' error. I have also attempted to create a persona for the user, to have the same (recieving from external) not work.

According to the information you posted above, your domain name is misspelt in the BIND configuration. As for the domain name itself, you were asked during the install if you wished to change the domain name, you should have said "yes" at that point and put in the correct domain name otherwise it will default to the FQDN of the server. Use zmprov to rename the domain (check the wiki or "zmprov help commands" for details).

Originally Posted by initialtechnologies

PLEASE HELP... we have spent too long attempting to get this to work - we have customers waiting for this.

That's not my concern and answers here are on a 'best effort' basis, this is a forum where people post when they have the time - we all have other things to do in life apart from these forums. BTW, all of these questions have been answered many times in the forums and wiki.